


Don't Fiddle with It

by godsdaisiechain (preux)



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preux/pseuds/godsdaisiechain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set right after “War Stories.” In the episode, Mal has been killed under torture, brought back from the dead, and (finally) rescued by the crew.  During the rescue, Kaylee was pinned under enemy fire, but River came up in the nick of time and shot three men with her eyes closed.  Kaylee is grateful… but pretty darn terrified.  Zoe and Wash are in their bunk doing needful things ‘tween married folk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mal: After Niska

**Author's Note:**

> For fan_flashworks challenges "disaster," "mirror," "kindness," "elusive or ephemeral," and "exploration."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mal is upset after being killed. So’s everyone else. Especially, it seems, Inara. Mal POV. Everything’s a mite fuzzy.

Simon, ever the doctor, stepped up close, as if to brush at Mal’s hand, but held himself away at the last moment. Before Mal could flinch. “I just reattached that ear, Captain. Don’t fiddle with it.”  His voice oozed education and culture. Everything Mal was not.

The Doc was talking like a cross between a doctor and an amused father. Like he was in charge. Like being Captain didn’t conjure nothin’ when a man been hurt a little bit. If anyone had asked, Mal would have had to admit it did hurt right smart, getting killed like that. But mayhap not so much as some other things.

“Don’t touch it,” Simon said. Mal hadn’t noticed his hand moving up again, checking that the ear was back where it belonged.

“If you say so, Doc,” Mal rolled his eyes. Gorram fool doctor.  How was a man not to pick at it? Niska cut his _tā mā de_ **_ear_** off his _gāis_ _ǐ **head**_ , and he warn’t supposed to touch it? Whose _xué xìng_ ear was it, anyways? Man can’t win for losing, but no use saying so where anyone could hear.

He ain’t never been killed before, never had bits lopped off, neither. He didn’t fix on letting that happen again. A man just wasn’t his proper self after getting killed. Mal could feel himself thinking the old way, the way Jayne still talked. The way his Ma wanted to beat out of him when he was a boy on Shadow. Instead, she had one of the hands,  the one who talked too good to be a hand and owned too many books to fit in right, teach him book learning instead. The others taught him to fight when the older boys beat on him for talking all stuck up and fancy-like. He took to that. Created quite the stir at the schoolhouse.  Teacher eventually married that hand, though. He give her a good life.

Mal pretended not to see how the crew was coddling him, like a baby not growed enough to feed itself.   Everyone was hiding the mirrors, too. And anything shiny enough to reflect. Mal hoped Simon didn’t put his ear back on all crooked. He went through the rest of the day trying to hide the twinkle in his eyes. His crew had come back for him. He could have _zhēn tā mā de_ cried.  But he didn’t. Not even when they walked in again, Wash all got up like a soldier.

He could never shed tears in front of Jayne. Not by his pretty floral bonnet, if he were wearin’ one.  He’d lose control of the ship.  Especially after he let Wash help handle killing Niska’s thug.  Trust Zoe to assume he was _bi chēzhé fāfēng de dà xiàng gēng qiáng_ and noble enough he’d insist on killing the scum by himself. Trust her never to see when he was about to collapse. Never to view him as an ordinary man. Just a big goddamn hero or a buffoon, if it suited her.

Little Kaylee cooked up somethin’ that Mal couldn’t taste. Not even the apples. He forced it down, though, as much as he could. He looked away and pretended not to see Jayne eating from his plate. Kaylee's hands was shaking like a ship with no stabilizers. No use giving her anything else to worry on.

The most creepifying part was when he went to the hold to get a breath of stale air. River was there, wandering around in her bare feet.  She nodded, boring through him with those eyes.  Mal wondered if she could see to the bottom of his soul.

“Don’t fiddle,” she said. Mal dropped his hand to his side, but River was gazing over his shoulder at a point in the middle of the firefly, like she was seein’ something that warn’t there. Which she almighty was, if he prognosticated anything on it.  She suddenly clapped her eyes on his. “Their souls are broken. Cut the soul from someone else. See what’s inside, but they can’t. Broken soul can’t see the good, no matter how they look. Only weakness shows. Not like some. Never seen one like you.”

“What the _shenme fengkuang de hema_ are you talking about?” he said, to cover up the curdling feeling in his middle. It was too close to what Niska had said, that he was cuttin’ on Mal to see what kind of man he was. He’d scared the little devil, too. Scared himself, if he admitted the right on it.

Something about River frightened him, deep in the core of himself. That first day, when she popped out like a jack-in-the-box, all cut up inside, it was like looking into a bent and faded mirror. Like the way his heart felt the day they left him to the mercy of the Alliance. Like she knew how much flesh the Alliance could strip from a heart but leave it beating.

River came closer, almost dancing in that way of her’n, and draped her skinny arms over Mal’s shoulders. Like she was tryin’ to recall to herself how to hug. “Terror gets you alive again. Good souls wax stronger, even in pieces.”  She peeled herself off, giggled, and ran into the passenger bunks before he could say anything else.  “Bang, bang, bad men. See the real me.”

Oddly, Mal felt deeply comforted. Even though he should have felt downright unsettled that the crazy girl was making so much sense.

An unexpected noise made Mal’s body snap to full alert. His heart thrummed fit to bounce from out his chest right across Serenity’s hold. He looked up, shaking and sweating like he’d just outrun a ship of Reavers on his own two legs. It was Inara, who set the heart thumping another way. The little coins on her shawl had brushed against the metal railings. “Well, hello there, Ambassador,” he said, voice quivering, then wished he’d grunted like Jayne. There was nothing for it but to pretend. “Fancy meeting you here.” He put his hand down before he touched the ear.

“Hello Mal,” she said, looking at the steps, not up, the way she normally would. Even Inara seemed to be lookin’ at him different now. Sad like. Giving up the sparring and softening toward a fella. Mal wished he had seen that softness without getting himself stabbed and chopped up all kindsa ways.

Something caught his attention, gave him a focus. Were her eyes red? She been cryin’?

“Those men bother you? Niska’s fellas?” Mal demanded, even though she was nowhere near Serenity or Niska during the trouble. “You get hurt?”

Those brown eyes flashed surprise right at him. “No, Mal.  And I do know how to defend myself.”

Now that was a curiosity. “They teach you that before or after sword fighting?” he asked.

“At the whore academy?” she asked, and suddenly Mal felt very weary.  He tugged at his ear, and Inara ran up and slapped his hand away.  “Don’t fiddle with it, Mal,” she hissed. Mal wanted to put his forehead on her shoulder, wanted her to give him tea and cuddle him to sleep.

“I better go lay down. Doc gave me something to put me out,” Mal said. “All soothing and soporific-like.”

Inara smiled and blinked too fast, grabbing his hand before he could touch his ear again. “Do you want to look lopsided?”

“Don’t got no say in that,” Mal said, and she rolled her eyes and stalked away. Mal made it back to his room, but not before Simon, Kaylee, the Shepherd and Jayne each told him not to interfere with his ear. Finally, Kaylee took his hand and insisted on tucking him in. He pretended to object, secretly comforted by her affectionate gesture. There was some horrified clucking when she saw the state of his bunk.

“How do you live like this, Cap’n?” she scolded. “But don’t you worry none.  I’ll clean it on up just this one time.” A man lost all dignity when his crew saved him. At least Zoe said “sir” when she told him he was living slovenly and in a manner unfitting to man or beast.

“Now you just leave my things be, little Kaylee,” Mal said, trying to hide a smile. “You ain’t got no call to be cleaning up any more of my messes today.”

Kaylee kissed his cheek. “I love my Captain. And he’s not getting better like this.” Mal could feel her shaking, so he let her do what she wanted. Poor mite must have been terrified, now knowin’ what would’ve happened to her if he died. He’d have a talk with the Shepherd next day. Make sure he saw Kaylee back home if anything happened to him and Zoe. He didn’t bother to be surprised that he knew, somehow, Shepherd would outlive Zoe in any type of a fight. “I’ll go on and get some soap, Cap’n.”

Mal took off his shirt and pulled the covers over himself. Before Kaylee came back, he fell into a fitful sleep. When he woke, sweat pouring off him like a river, blood pounding in his ears, it was late.  Everyone else was sleeping, except the Shepherd, keeping watch in the Black.  Mal would talk to him a spell, then amble into the hold, maybe make hisself some coffee on the way. He sniffed, and something that smelled much nicer than anything else he’d ever smelled in that bunk tickled his nostrils. What on earth had Kaylee been up to?

Something rustled softly. “Mal?” It was Inara. She sounded worried, like he warn’t answering when he was supposed to.

“Thought you didn’t service the crew,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word. He was too wearisome and paining for a fight. The Doc had done his best, but some things couldn’t be mended right away. A soft cloth touched his forehead.  Inara was wiping the sweat from his brow, like she cared. The shinies in her hair glinted in the dim light.

“Don’t fiddle with it, Mal,” she murmured, gently moving his hand away from the ear.  “Here, sit up. I have your medicine.”

Mal did as he was told. He moaned, not caring how much his wounded little boy softness showed in front of her. He let Inara brush the hair from his face and hold the cup so he could drink down cool water. Except it was tea.  His body shook like that heart was trying to burst out again.  Except it was sobs.

He never knew exactly how it happened, but his shirt was already off, and he was crying against her silky nightgown with her soft, sweet-smelling hair falling over him and she was smoothing his skin and his hair and telling him everything was all right now. And it was for a moment. Except she was crying, too, and a man couldn’t abide that, so he put his arms around her and he held her until they was both cried out.

“I’m sorry, Mal,” she said. Mal concentrated on keeping his hands pressed flat on Inara’s waist and back. She was liable to pull away all bristly-like if he stroked the soft silk. Probably because that wouldn’t be the real reason a man was stroking.  Because he would actually be touching her, Inara, not the companion that protected her from the worlds.

“I wasn’t terrible well collected my own self,” he said, thinking to make a joke.  Except his breath came all raspy like a tumbleweed was caught somewhere between his throat and his lungs. She swallowed, then pulled away gently. He let her go, but not all at once, savoring the feeling of her supple flesh under his fingers.

Water splashed in the basin and Mal felt some relief that Kaylee had seen to it.  “This room isn’t fit for a sick person, Mal,” she said when she came back to wipe his face and chest. “You have engine grease on your faucet.” She took a while, probably cleaning up after Kaylee.

“I ain’t sick,” he said. It was too intimate to let her touch him in the dark without talking.  “You all takin’ it in turns to watch me like some type of invalid?”

“No, Mal,” Inara said, her voice all quivery.  She took his hand and put it on her thigh. “Don’t poke at it.” He could feel her trembling, and he sat up. “Here,” she said.

It was part of an apple, sliced up the way he liked. She handed him a slice and he took it. They sat next to each other, munching on the sweet fruit together.  To Mal, it tasted of sunshine and promise, of an autumn day on Shadow, with the purtiest gal he’d ever seed, just before her folks took her off to Miranda.

Being dead a spell made a man daring. He slipped an arm about Inara and she let him. Something in the soft silk whispered to Mal in the darkness. The words slipped out before he knew he’d thought them. “You ain’t never been like this with anyone afore, have you? It was always the companion, not you.” Her hands stopped moving, but they quivered against him, like her voice.  “You ain’t never done this before.”  He stopped talking, but the words kept going inside his head. Never cried like this, cared like this. Sure, she liked her clients well enough. Maybe even loved some of them a little.  But they were safe.  There were all those rules to protect her. She was just as innocent as River some ways, maybe more.  Just as shut off from himself, maybe more.

There was always something mighty scary right under the surface with River, something a wise man didn’t rile up. With Inara, the layer below was shrill and contentious. She was only that way with him. Like he meant something different. Like she was hiding something it would be too easy for him to find.

He didn’t expect her to say anything. “I,” she said. “Almost. I almost did.”  And Mal thought that was why she had left.  She was running from someone. Not someone who hurt her or she angered. Someone she loved. Almost loved. “But it was too late.”

“I…” Mal started, but Inara kept talking.

“It’s so complicated, Mal. I have nothing else. Nothing outside the Guild.”

“Some fella hurt you?”

“It was all a misunderstanding,” Inara said. “It was too late by the time I understood.”

“But you fell in love, after,” he said, trying not to sound too eager. “That’s how you know it were only almost?”

The answer was better than Mal could have hoped. “Serenity has that effect on people,” Inara said. Mal wanted to put his head on her shoulder, but it felt good where they were.  “Are you ready to go back to sleep?”

“Do I have a choice?” he asked.           

“No, Mal,” said Inara.  “I put something in the tea to help you sleep.”

“I wish you hadn’t gone and done that,” Mal said, suddenly frightened.  He didn’t want Niska rising up in his dreams.

“It keeps the dreams away,” Inara said, like she knew. Like she had cause to know. She covered him with a blanket that smelled better than it should have. Kaylee must have washed it while he was all passed out.

“Lie down with me?” Mal asked, as confounded by the words as she was. He cursed Niska for killing him and taking away his shame. But for once, Inara didn’t tease him.  She eased herself beside him and he rested his head on her shoulder, wishing he could do that every night.

In the morning, Mal woke up under a blanket from Kaylee’s bunk, his memory all fuzzy at the edges. She had sprinkled it with Inara’s perfume to make it smell better.

He never mentioned anything to Inara about that night because he was afraid it was a desperate man’s dream. He decided not to fiddle with it and see how it healed.


	2. No going back?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Collage.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firefly screen grabs are from "Our Mrs. Reynolds" and publicity stills. There is a strong fair use rationale for this fanart. Other images are in the public domain.


	3. Purblind Philosophy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What some of the crew think. Zoe, Wash, River, Kaylee, Jayne POVs.
> 
> For the 'disaster' challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the episode, Shepherd Book and Adelai Niska both refer to the philosophy of Sun Yu, who suggests that the way to learn about people is to torture them.

 

**Zoe**

She should have known it would be a disaster. Everything else was, after all.

Letting Wash go on a mission was bound to result in some type of bungling.  Man couldn’t shoot particular well. Never hit no one or nothing as far as she could tell.  Wasn’t big nor strong nor, before now, terrible brave even. So how could she have let it happen? How could the Captain not stop her? Were they all _xué xìng_ idiots? But she never imagined anything like this. Who would have conjured Niska finding them just then?

Jayne could have taken Niska’s men. He was that good, ‘specially when he was workin’ with the Captain. They took them the last time. But Wash? She loved him, loved him more’n her own heart, but Wash didn’t stand a chance.  Not against men like that.

It didn’t take too much figuring to find them. Thank the worlds Jayne thought to pick up all that money.  They’d needed every last bit. And only Jayne had any real reckoning on what they would be facing, businessman or no businessman. For all the Shepherd seemed to think he knew about Adelai Niska. No man who could get treated on an Alliance ship no questions asked could ever understand what it was like for a crew like them. Not even as much as he wanted to.

So, only Jayne knew how much prevaricating was coming out of her mouth, and he didn’t fight near enough to change anyone’s mind. Just the right amount for show, so’s they would know it was a danger he took serious. Niska called himself a business man, and he was of a sort, but really just a sadistic _māo yòu chī_. And a prideful fool. Making her choose.  Mocking her.  He’d pay for that. She’d have seen to it herself, if’n the Captain hadn’t already taken care of it by the time she got back.

Zoe chose between Wash and the Captain, but it wasn’t a choice, not rightly. You don’t rescue the hero when there’s an ordinary mortal being hurt. The Captain could handle Niska. Captain could handle anything. The Alliance didn’t scare him. Doing business with women what shot him didn’t scare him. Reavers didn’t scare him. Niska didn’t scare him. She could see it in him. The contempt for the little man, as if he gave psychotic lowlives like Badger a bad name.

Zoe knew what scared her. All those things. But especially Niska. Man cut the Captains’s _tā mā de_ **_ear_** off his _gāis_ _ǐ **head**_. What kind of animal does that?   

But the Captain lived up to her faith in him once again. He had already ended that twisted runt by the time they got back. Mal had never been killed before, never had bits lopped off, neither, but there he was, fighting it out. And in just a few hours, he was ambling round Serenity, good as knew, acting like a little boy when Simon scolded him for tugging at his ear.

Zoe didn’t fix on letting that happen again. Anyone cutting bits off the Captain. Anyone hurting her husband. Sweet Wash. And that meant his feelings especially. Ain’t no one was going to harm that sweet heart.

Poor Wash, thinking he was a man now, just like the rest of them. Thinking one day of torture was a war story. Poor lamb. She ain’t never telling him the truth of that. Never. So she’d act all impressed with him for a spell and hope he never figured it out. Hope she didn’t have to eat too much more of her own cooking, neither. How could anything started out normal taste so bad? Gave her new respect for Kaylee and even Saffron/Brigit/Yolanda.

Leastways Wash understood her belief in the Captain now. Least he had it now, too. He was going to make some beautiful babies.

 

**Jayne**

I hope they was all convinced enough that I didn’t want to rescue Mal, even though I did.  Hope they all think I’m still a selfish gorram bastard. That them apples was just a fluke ‘cause my head was all big what with Simon callin’ me a hero and all that. Hope it’s all back to what passes for normal on Serenity.

Helped that I was that scared of Niska. Worse’n a rabbit sighting a hawk. No one in their right mind would go near Skyplex.  I told Mal not to take that job. Damn that Niska was a scary old fool.  Hope he’s dead. Don’t know how Mal done kilt him, but figure it’d be him doing it, what nobody thought could be done. Not a man to cross.

Twarn’t a comfortable thing when a merc started growing hisself one of them conscience things the Shepherd was constantly yammering on about.  The man’s worse’n my Ma about them things, even if he can shoot a sight better. ‘Course the Shepherd were fine in other respects. Almost not like a Shepherd ‘tall when it came to training. And crime. And knowin’ about Niska. And kneecapping trained fighters.

I’m right sorry I ever had cause to know about these feelin’s.  It’s what come of spending time with Shepherds and fool crazy girls dribbling out them crazy words like to tie a feller in knots of his own reckonings. It’s what come of people thinking I’m some type of goddamn hero, when I’m just a low down snake.  Now it’s not just them fool mudders but the doc even. Top 3% my own man parts.

‘Course Mal has a conscience. Big one. Size of a moon. One of the nice ones. Trouble from that damn thing were near constant. Giving back the loot. Takin’ on the Doc.  Not handin’ over the girl for the reward.

But Mal could do things like that and take the licks for it. No Cobb were ever made of that stuff.

Please don’t let any of them know what I done. I’ll even eat more of Zoe’s soup.  Free soup is free soup, and my Ma done taught me never to waste no soup.

How could anyone make soup that bad?

 

**River**

“What the _shenme fengkuang de hema_ are you talking about?” Mal said, to cover up the feeling that set his insides writhing like snakes. Psychosomatic. Physical manifestations of emotional response.  Results of negative conditioning. Torture.

That little man had cut him up badly. Not just his body. River knew that could heal.

 

> _Healing. Concatenation of natural processes related to inflammatory and immunological pathways._

But Mal’s heart was sliced deep, too. That might not get all the way better, not without some help. She knew, suspected he knew, too.

That first day, when River popped out like a jack-in-the-box, reborn naked into Serenity’s hold after an aborted hibernation, the first thing she saw, aside from Simon, was him.

 

> _Mal._ Bad. In the Latin.

Malcom Reynolds, a whole new kind of person.

> _Homo novus_ : new man, genus _Homo_.  
> 
> “Brave new world that has such people in it.” Shakespeare, William. Earth-that-was. The Tempest. Miranda.
> 
> _Miranda_
> 
> _**Miranda** _
> 
> <fade to black>

Growing up in the Core, among the wealthy and powerful, River never knew that anyone hurt or pained down deep. You could complain about the vicissitudes of hiring help or getting a tailor worth paying.  Violations of the hegemony were worth complaints.

 

> **Hegemony:** seemingly logical structures of power. **_Lies._**

It was poor form to have deep feelings at all, deep hurts, let alone to show them. That time was before the treatments unlocked the powers of her own mind.

At the Academy, everyone was harmed, many cut so deep they were no longer really living. Catatonic byproducts of beings once known as children. They did it to show what was real inside. Like the teachings of Sun Yu. Of course, River had learned that his premises were deeply flawed, the product of a purblind philosophy, but no one ever believed her when she corrected canon.

At the Academy, most died, curled up in little balls, willing their hearts to stop. Some they tossed away like chaff on the wind, to see what harm they would do out in the worlds. Saffron was one of those.  Pulled from her home and subjected to conditioning so harsh she forgot her own name. **_No good would come of her_** , but that was the point.  To make people afraid. So they would need the Alliance.

The strongest ones worked for a time and then left. Like the Shepherd, but he was something else entirely. Renegade philosopher in the body of a failed war hero turned Shepherd.

Until Serenity (03-K64-Firefly), River never knew that there were regular people, hurt and bleeding into the core of themselves and still walking around. Until then she had thought Neitzsche was also purblind.  That overcoming the adverse consequences of conditioning was not possible. That surviving through sheer willpower was not a normal, sustainable state of being.

Mal was one of those. It was like looking into a bent and faded mirror. Another person knew how much flesh the Alliance could strip from a heart but leave it beating.  And, until that moment, he thought he was the only one, because he had never met anyone like her.

Only River fully appreciated why she scared Mal. How he could see himself in her pain. He could see how she fell instantly, irrevocably in love with Serenity. Like him.  Like Inara. Even more than Kaylee, who loved all ships.

Mal could see the evidence of psychosis in the way she was acting, too, even though he called it by another name. It was right for him to be afraid to turn into a crazy girl. He looked silly in a dress. Sartorial incongruity did not suit him. Pun intended. Because suits did not suit Mal, either.

Right then, he was sad. He needed comfort, the way she did, but Mal didn’t have Simon. River tried to remember how to hug someone.

 

> **Hug, hugging:** Manifestation of comfort and affection between intimate friends and acceptable social exchange between fond acquaintances. _Not a business appropriate gesture._

On Serenity, Kaylee and Simon did all the hugging.  She did her best, but it felt odd, hugging Mal. It was like he didn’t know how to be hugged. The words tangled on her tongue, the way they did now. “Terror gets you alive again. Good souls wax stronger, even in pieces.” Mal’s brow wrinkled, trying to patch that together into sense, so she let out the girl part of herself, giggled and ran into the passenger bunks. “Bang, bang, bad men. See the real me.” Hopefully, he would understand enough.

Kaylee did not comprehend. She was kind, but always scared when things were hard, unless the captain or Zoe or the Shepherd was right there. Kaylee couldn’t do anything all on her own. She trusted people to take care of her. She let them hurt her because she couldn’t imagine hurting anyone on purpose, ever. And something in Kaylee never quite believed that anyone ever hurt another purposely, despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary. River wanted to know what it felt like to be that gentle and kind and hopeful inside, because it gave Kaylee a special power no one else on Serenity had. But River knew she never would know. She had been born another way entirely.

 

**Kaylee**

I thought she was just a little girl, but she looked and closed her eyes and killed them, just like it were nothin.’ Just added it all up in her head. How could a little girl learn to do that? What did they do to her? Ain’t nobody could shoot like that who’s just an ordinary person.

What do I do now? I can’t tell no one what happened.  River’s my friend for all the way she scared me. She didn’t mean to do no bad to no one. She was just tryin’ to help. Doin’ the job give to me what I didn’t do. I couldn’t do it.

I don’t want her in no trouble with Simon. Or the Cap’n. 

There he is. He looks so unsteady, like he needs a hug. Not that he would ever admit it. Poor Cap’n. I’d better tuck him in and make sure he’s okay.

 

**Wash**

What a disaster.  Wash could have _zhēn tā mā de_ cried. But he didn’t. He had helped lead a rescue instead. His first rescue. Not that he knew what he were doing. 

Thank all the dinosaurs of the land they called “this land” that Shepherd Book stepped up to help, that he knew about this Sun Yu character. Not that Wash would read that _bùshì w_ _ǒ tā mā de dà xiàng de pìgu._ Not after what happened.

And Zoe was acting the real little woman. Making soup. Bad soup. Terrible, if he admitted it. How did anyone make soup that bad? So that was downright unsettling even more than her telling the Captain to ‘take her hard.’

They both enjoyed that a good sight more than Wash would have anticipated on. Now Wash knew he was the soupmaker. The stay at home body. The worrier.

Zoe’s soup was so bad. Hopefully she would get tired of making it after a while. He couldn’t very well complain after he had acted like such an ass ‘bout being the man.

He was glad he would never have a real war story, never know the things Zoe and Mal learned together. Not that he’d admit it. Aside from the soup, having Zoe look at him all admirin’ was mighty nice. He couldn’t blame Zoe for worshiping Mal, though. Not now.  The man was _bi chēzhé fāfēng de dà xiàng gēng qiáng_.  

Mal was no ordinary man. Just a big damn hero.

 

 


	4. On the Cortex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inara is in her shuttle, screening clients on the cortex. 
> 
> Warning: Post-show information about the real reason Inara left the Core

She'd left because she was dying.

Inara didn’t want to die. Especially not now, not when she had finally met the one person who made her whole. Her soulmate. And of all people, it was Malcolm Reynolds, a man who should have been running a ranch on Shadow, following his heart and caring for herds and hands.  Work he was made for, born to, raised to do. He would have had enough love for all the hands on a ranch, a man who had so much love for his crew after his soul had been crushed into the very dust of Serenity Valley.

Instead, he was out here, damaged and torn. Rough around the edges. Driven by a misplaced nobility of purpose. Annoyed beyond reason at the thought of her on the job. With men like Atherton. Little men.  The smallest of men, if she came to admit it, at least in his eyes.  And his eyes had become her eyes, ever so slowly over these last months as she saw more and more of the Verse.

The faces on the screen had all begun to run into each other, especially now that she was concentrating on young virgins. First time lovers who wouldn’t notice any distraction in her manner, and lack of engagement. Young men with young problems. Easy problems to solve. Easy minds. Uncomplicated.

Back at the Academy, she’d never believed it was possible to find a soul mate. It had sounded so unrealistic, like something they told people on the rim to make them feel better about their lot in life. The opiate of the people--fantasies like that.  Making them believe that somehow love could mask poverty and deprivation.

Inara had believed only in clients. Believed that even romantic attachments were a type of contract, coldly considered and strategically made.  Even the ones she liked more than the rest. 

She missed her home in the city, but she wanted to see the universe, and now Serenity had become her home. Mal had become her rock, exuding a love that warmed her to the core of her being.  He had become the center of her world.

It would be hard to leave, but she had to. Before she got too sick to take care of herself. That thought was pushed back. There was no room for thoughts like that out here in the Black.

Inara wished she could curl up with Mal, snuggle him to sleep. Especially tonight, when he was quivering with pain, checking to make sure his ear was attached. She wanted to smooth his hair and kiss him and tell him everything would be all right, but she knew that if she did, it would be a lie. How horrifically unfair that she would not be able to grow old with him. She could not even be kind to him. She had to keep him at such a distance.

She’d never felt this way before. Fond. Jealous. Infuriated. Weak-kneed and sharp-tongued. Certainly, she was fond of many of her clients. She had chosen them for a certain compatibility of spirit, after all. But not one of them touched her heart the way Mal did.

A journey to see the universe had sounded romantic. She had never suspected that the romance would be so literal. Inara sighed and looked over her shoulder at the doorway. She could go to him, but she wasn’t certain whether it would be selfish of her, whether the kindness would be to herself and not to Mal.


End file.
